Surviving The Evacuation (Book 4): Unsafe Haven

by Frank Tayell

  “No,” Mr Harper said flatly. “We’ll take one of the classrooms. Two of them I think.”

  Nilda thought of protesting, but decided she couldn’t be bothered.

  “Fine. Whatever.” She grabbed her empty bag and headed back to the bike.

  “Where are you going?” Jay asked.

  “Same place as you. We need to get the rest of the supplies.”

  “I think,” Tracy said, eyeing the newcomers, “that I’ll stay here. I’ll see if I can get some of the taps plumbed into the water system. You reckon you can fall off a bike if I’m not there to watch?”

  “I’ve been getting a lot of practice,” Mark said.

  They went to Mark and Tracy’s house. It was a semi-detached, nicely located near one of the better infant schools. It was the ideal home for a family with children, or one expecting them. As they were packing up the supplies, Nilda noticed a photograph. It was of the two of them building a snowman on the green opposite the house. The couple looked happy, almost serene. Nilda remembered the last time they’d had a snowfall that thick. It had been four years ago. She glanced around. There were a few other pictures, but none more recent than that one. Nor were there any signs of children, but upstairs there was one empty bedroom, a slight pink tinge underneath the white-painted walls. Nilda thought she understood.

  It only took the four of them one trip to load everything from the house. Nilda noticed that Mark left the photographs behind.

  “I’d like to go and see what’s at the hospital,” she said when they were all outside the house.

  “What for?” Jay asked.

  “If there are undead there, it would be useful to know how many. And if there are only a few perhaps we can deal with them. If not… well, better we know now. You go on. I’ll meet you back at the school.”

  “I’ll go too,” Jay said.

  “We’ll all go,” Sebastian offered.

  Nilda tried to protest. It did no good.

  They saw no undead on the way to the small hospital.

  “I doubt we’ll find anything,” Mark panted. “I saw them bring up vans and lorries to empty the place. That was back during the curfew.”

  “I can’t believe they’d be efficient enough to take everything,” Nilda replied.

  But all plans for investigating the hospital were quickly abandoned when they saw the front entrance. There was a car, its doors left wide open, which had crashed into the main entrance. Around it, moving purposelessly this way and that, were two dozen of the undead.

  “Let’s get back. There’s no point hanging around,” Mark said.

  “Wait,” Nilda replied.

  “What for?”

  “I want to see if they’re coming from inside or not.”

  “Impossible to tell,” Sebastian said. “The doors are broken. They can roam freely inside and out. We’ve got to assume that the building’s infested with them.”

  “Come on, Mum,” Jay said.

  Reluctantly Nilda followed them back to the school. It wasn’t that she expected to find anything useful in the hospital, not really. But with each passing day there were more and more of the undead. She was starting to think they would need to prepare for a siege. And she was worried that was something none of them would survive.

  “No!” They heard Tracy say to Mr Harper when they arrived at the school.

  “I don’t see why not. It can’t be hard,” he replied.

  She was covered in dirt except for the parts soaked with water, and even those were coated in a thin layer of grease. She was sitting on the steps to the pavilion, Mr Harper standing just a few inches too close, towering over her.

  “No. You’re right. It’s not hard. It’s impossible.”

  “What is?” Mark asked.

  Harper turned, surprise on his face. Despite the noise of wheels and bags and feet, he’d not heard them approach. Nilda thought she now partly understood how he’d become trapped.

  “I was just asking why she can’t get the showers over in the boarding house to work.”

  “Because,” Tracy said as she slowly stood up, “that building is over there, on the other side of the school. The pipes aren’t connected. So I’d either have to lay new ones, or dig up the concrete to find the old ones. I don’t have any pipes. I don’t have any way of digging through concrete. You want showers? You use these ones. You want hot water? You boil it yourself. You want to eat then you help find the food.”

  Mumbling something about ‘getting the kids settled in,’ he headed back to the boarding house.

  “I don’t like him,” Tracy said, as they unloaded the bikes. “Since you left I haven’t seen the kids or that woman. It’s just him and there’s something about him that I just don’t like.”

  “He’s here now,” Mark said. “There’s not much we can do about that.”

  Wishing she disagreed, Nilda finished unloading. She wanted to put her feet up. She was tired. Jay and the others were too, but there wasn’t time for rest. They went out again, this time going back to the terrace to collect the food.

  The problem was Mark. Had the roads not been covered in so much litter from the evacuation, he might have fallen off his bike less often. As it was, he stumbled to a halt every few hundred yards. He didn’t always fall off, though he had a tendency to throw his feet out and let go of the handlebars, allowing the bike to drop to the ground with a clatter that echoed off the deserted buildings. At first it had been funny, then it had been frustrating, and then, when they reached the end of one particular road and saw four of the undead coming towards them, they realised how dangerous it was. They’d not fought, but turned, and found a different way around.

  Jay, Sebastian, and Nilda made a second trip on their own. By the time they got back their exhaustion, caused as much by tension as exertion, was complete. They collapsed on the steps outside the pavilion next to Tracy and Mark. The Harpers appeared a few minutes later.

  “What about sorting out some food then,” Mr Harper half-asked, half-demanded.

  “I don’t cook,” Nilda said, firmly. Tracy said nothing.

  “Oh? Right.” There was that tone in his voice again.

  “I do,” Mark said. “And not as badly as Tracy makes out.”

  Despite what Tracy said, Mark was a good cook. Or good enough when the ingredients all came in tins.

  After they’d eaten a meal in stilted silence, Nilda went outside to stare at the pitches. Sebastian followed her.

  “Not quite the people one would wish to be stranded with at the end of the world,” Sebastian said. “The timid wife, and the husband about to graduate from petty chauvinism to full blown misogyny.”

  “No. That I can deal with. There’s something else about Andrew Harper I just don’t trust.”

  “You think he’s violent?” Seb asked.

  “Towards Sylvia and the kids, you mean? No. He’s not, I’m sure of it.” And she was sure. She knew ‘violent.’ But that was a long time ago, before Jay was born. “He’s just not… I don’t know. My gut says kick him out. But perhaps I’m being unfair. I was never that good at judging people.”

  “I had noticed that,” he said.

  She turned to glare at him, but saw he was smiling.

  “I knew someone, once,” Nilda said. “It was a long time ago. He would always watch groups and how they interacted. He’d look at the dynamic and explain why people acted the way they did. Like, he’d say that some of them were reverting to childhood or trying to exert dominance or something.”

  “He was a psychologist?” Sebastian asked.

  “Nothing like that. He was just fascinated by people. We used to go up to Westminster on Saturdays, and we’d sit on the bench outside the Cathedral and watch all the tourists. I’d make up stories about the people, but he had a way of knowing what they were thinking. Like, if they were waiting for someone, and if it was a date or family. And he’d always get it right. Always. I mean, at first I thought he was guessing, but he actually went up to people to a
sk. And, once, there was this…” She shook her head, as if to banish a too raw memory. “Anyway, we don’t have time for that. Not now. I don’t care why they’re acting the way they do. Either they pull their weight and help, or they go.”

  “Except they won’t. I know you won’t kick them out. Not the children.”

  “Yeah,” she admitted. “Fine. That means we’ve got new mouths to feed and backs to protect, and out of the four of them only one is a provider, and at best he’s going to only provide for them. Maybe we can change that. Maybe we can get the woman working. Maybe. But right now, they’re a liability. We need more people. Or, one way or another, a lot fewer.”

  “But if they won’t go… Wait, you’re thinking of leaving?”

  “Just you, me, and Jay. Perhaps. If I knew of somewhere safer than this, then I’d say we should leave right now. I’d even leave the food. Or some of it. But where can we go? We went through all that and ended up here.”

  “So we stay. And you’re right. If that’s going to work then we need more people. And it has to work. There’s nowhere to run to. So how do we find others?”

  14th March

  They lit a bonfire. Wanting to separate the Harpers, Tracy and Mark took Sylvia to begin digging up the cricket pitch. The two children helped Jay keep the bonfire lit and fed with evergreen branches to send up a pillar of smoke. Sebastian and Nilda took Mr Harper back to the terrace to gather the last of the food.

  “This is your place is it?” Mr Harper said sniffily when he saw the small house. Nilda said nothing as they collected the last of the bags.

  When they got back they found a middle-aged woman, Nilda vaguely recognised, tearing away at the grass with a vengeful ferocity. She paused, leaning on her shovel just long enough to introduce herself as Marjory Stowe, someone who’d worked at the fish counter at the supermarket, before ripping into the ground once more. Nilda didn’t ask what demons she was exorcising.

  Nilda headed over to the pavilion to unload the bags.

  “Is that the lot?” Jay asked.

  “More or less. How are things here?”

  “This new woman. She’s alright. The kids are… I dunno. Scared, I suppose.”

  “We all are.” She looked around. She saw the activity, she heard the noise. “There’s a few more things I want to get from the house. Will you be all right here?”

  “You want me to come with you?” he asked, giving her a far too grown-up look.

  “No. I’ll go on my own. It’ll be easier. If I see any of the undead, I’ll just turn around and come back.”

  She headed straight to their house. She came across the undead only once. Two of them were shambling down the street towards the town. She doubled back and took a different road. When she arrived at the terrace, she checked that the street was empty and the alley clear. Only when she was sure she wouldn’t be heard did she kick down the front door. Satisfied at the way the lock had splintered, she went inside and opened all the cupboards in the kitchen, pulling out the saucepans and crockery onto the floor. She stamped on a few mugs, kicking the shards out into the living room. She opened and emptied the drawers, then went upstairs and did the same up in the bedroom. Taking one last look around her house she decided that, yes, if anyone came they would see a place that had already been looted.

  She left the house, and then searched for some more bicycles. She found two easily enough, but if - or more likely when - she left, she hoped Sebastian would be coming too. She found a third, then hid all three under a tarpaulin in a neighbour’s backyard.

  “Good enough,” she murmured. She had her escape plan. But bikes were slow.

  She glanced towards the edge of town. The smoke from their bonfire was clearly visible above the rooftops. She thought about going straight back, but there was one last place she wanted to check. The police station. And she wanted to do it without anyone else knowing. Sebastian had mentioned seeing a few police cars during his journey to the Muster Point, but he’d mostly seen Army vehicles. It had been the same in the days before the evacuation. There was a chance then, that the police vehicles would still be parked at the station and have fuel in their tanks. Not a great chance, but one worth investigating. With so many undead nearby, if she could think of somewhere they might go then she would prefer to drive.

  She was nearing the town centre when she heard it. At first she thought it was a car backfiring. Then she heard it again. It was a shot. Someone was shooting. She didn’t know if she wanted to help. Anyone who was armed was probably a representative of the government and thus to be avoided. But whoever they were, they’d be able to see the smoke from the bonfire. She headed towards the sound.

  The shooter was definitely not police. And though she was standing on the roof of an Army Armoured Personnel Carrier, the blue and silver streaks in her hair were definitely non-regulation. But in the woman’s hands was a pump-action shotgun with a folding stock that Nilda guessed was as military as the vehicle. Surrounding the vehicle were the undead. Nine were still standing, the remains of three more lay on the ground. As Nilda watched from the shelter of an alley three hundred yards away, the woman fired again, messily decapitating a zombie in a blue and white ski jacket.

  That left eight, but as she glanced down the street, Nilda saw four more heading towards them. And there would be more coming, she was sure of that. Each shot would be like a siren to them, but Nilda was reluctant to help the woman. The undead were gathered around one side of the vehicle. The woman could easily jump down the other side and escape. Why hadn’t she? The only explanation was that whatever was inside had to be something of value. These days that meant ammunition, fuel, or food.

  The four undead were getting closer. They were now only fifty yards from the alleyway. Whatever Nilda was going to do, she had to do now.

  Nilda got on the bike and cycled out into the road. She glanced back. The four undead behind had seen her and become more aggressively animated at her appearance. She glanced at the truck. The undead there were still pawing and clawing at the windows and frame of the vehicle. Pushing down on the pedals with all her strength, she sprinted towards the APC.

  “I’ll lure them away,” Nilda called out to the woman standing on the vehicle’s roof. “You see the smoke? Head towards it, okay?” The woman didn’t respond.

  Nilda cycled past, slowed, and then stopped about fifty yards further down the road. She turned in the saddle, checking that the undead were following. They were. She kicked off and, darting frequent glances behind, kept a slow and steady pace until a ragged creature in a tattered dress lurched out of a side road. The zombie tripped on the dress’s torn hem and fell in a stumbling dive with its arms outstretched. Its clawing fingers brushed against the front spokes of Nilda’s bicycle. She swerved, put on a burst of speed, and angled to the next side road. She headed down a narrow one-way street, pausing at the end just until she was sure the undead were following. Then she cycled on, leading the undead away from the truck. She took another turn, another side road, and then decided that she was far enough away. Checking the undead were out of sight, she ducked down an alley, then another, doubling back towards the APC. More than ever, she wanted to know what was inside.

  When she got there, she found the woman still there, filling a bag with something from the back of the vehicle. Judging from the broken glass scattered around a nearby shop front, the bag was a new acquisition.

  Nilda came to a stop. The woman didn’t turn.

  “Hi,” Nilda said.

  The woman didn’t reply, she just kept filling the bag. Nilda thought of just cycling away - she’d had enough of selfish ingratitude from those whom she’d rescued - but then saw what was in the back of the truck. Box upon box of military rations. She dismounted, letting the bike fall to the ground. Grabbing the shotgun, the woman swung around, but relaxed when she saw it was Nilda.

  “Hi,” Nilda said again, softly, trying not to stare at the scars running up from the woman’s neck and across the left side of her f
ace. The woman nodded back.

  “Um…” Nilda was uncertain what to say. “That’s a lot of food.”

  The woman nodded again.

  “If you’re coming to the school… I mean. We’ve water and shelter, and we’ve got food, though this would be a welcome addition to it. You can’t carry it all. I mean…” She stopped. She realised she’d been babbling. It was the gun in the woman’s hands coupled with the way her scar turned a bemused smile on one side of her face into a sneer on the other.

  “I’m Nilda.” She held out her hand.

  “Tuck,” the woman said taking the hand. Her grip was firm.

  “Tuck?” Nilda said, trying to think of what to say next. “Um. Is that short for something?”

  Tuck closed her eyes for a moment and took a breath. “Lu. Cy. Tuck. Er.” The words came out slow, stilted as if each movement of her vocal chords had to be dragged out of some deep recess of memory.

  Nilda took in the scars and the woman’s obvious discomfort.

  “You’re deaf?” she asked.

  Tuck nodded.

  “But you can lip-read?”

  Tuck gave her a look that seemed to say ‘obviously’.

  “O.K,” Nilda said, over-enunciating each syllable. “There. Is. A. School. The Smoke. See?” She pointed.

  Tuck rolled her eyes. Nilda flushed with sudden embarrassment, but then Tuck gave a crooked smile.

  “Sorry,” Nilda murmured.

  Tuck shook her head, pointed at Nilda’s bag, then at the vehicle, and then returned to grabbing at ration packs. Nilda joined her. The two bags were quickly filled.

  “We’ll come back with the others,” Nilda said, “to collect the rest.”

  Tuck stopped filling her bag, took Nilda by the arm, and gently turned her so that she could see her lips.

  “Sorry. We’ll come back with more people to collect the rest,” Nilda repeated. She looked back up the road. The zombies were gone, but they might return.

  “Did you drive here?” she asked.

  The woman nodded, then pointed at the fuel cap, then shook her head.